http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEGT8QkzM9M
About halfway through the must-see Iron Jawed Angels a
Sen.'s wife, who has been drawn to the suffrage movement is in the most
difficult emotional spot - a young daughter or two, a husband who's a Sen. in
1918, all the social pressures. One day
she comes into Alice Paul's, and the other serious women suffragists office.
Alice Paul know perfectly well who this woman is. The woman is 10 years older than Alice whose
recently graduated from Swarthmore College, the Senator's wife is her
senior. 'Oh, hello, I was wondering if I
could help.' Alice happens to be holding
a letter in her hand that needs to be typed, and without making eye contact as
I recall, puts the letter in the Sen.'s wife's hand and says, 'this needs to be
typed,' cold as ice. The Sen.'s wife is
nonplussed. 'Well I've never typed
before;' a typewriter is on a desk at their side. Still without making eye
contact, 'the keys have letters on
them,' and Alice goes elsewhere on
further business, leaving the Sen.'s wife standing, and then sitting, and then
starting to type.
Alice was an INSHE warrior, insanely humane warrior of
Unviolence. She wasn't there to
play. She wasn't there to mince words,
she wasn't there to dialogue with people who didn't want to be serious, but she
provided the ultimate service that one human being can provide to another - To
blaze the trail on what needs to be done, to find what needs to be done, best
understood by some as the 'daily bread.'
That's what we need, is a cause worth giving our lives for, today, worth
sacrificing all our selfish, stupid, hideous intoxications of the head and the
flesh for, today. And in handing that
letter, putting that into the Sen.'s wife's hand, Alice gave her daily bread
she needed, to be taken or to be rejected.
There was no hidden agenda.
There was no political threat correctness. There was no undue harshness, there was no
undue meanness. The harshness was that
the next hundred generations of girls would look forward to second-class citizenship
- that was the harshness. Alice neither amplified that, nor allowed herself
distraction from that, or to distract others by irrelevant, inappropriate,
pleasantries; and thereby she gave life to that Sen.'s wife.
And you need to be about the business of giving that life to
the 200 billion people we are about to condemn to an existence without it, and
to everyone laterally around you that you influence at all, because what you
are is what they will tend to.
Be what the world needs to be. Be clear. Stand on the truth, only, make that
your true agenda. I'm sorry, political correctness why? Couching things in multiple agendas, why? You
want to generate mistrust, really, as an INSHE warrior? I don't think so. Trustworthiness is everything. Transparency is a necessity of
trustworthiness, openness, even to the police, as were Gandhi and King. If you're standing on the truth, why would
you hide anything? And the truth is the
only place to find the power you need.
Find the right, true, moral agenda, and stand on it. Ultimate power.
No comments:
Post a Comment